Mystery Weapons from Bulgaria

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Originally Posted by erlikhan

Yes. Can reach Izmir villages by many ways. Still,what I think is, brass hilted samples look similar, and mass produced to me. About the one of your friend like Samakov museum, I agree it belongs to an older era for sure. I havent seen similar samples here. The fullers seem not to come together some distance before the tip as it is supposed to be. Could be shortened?

Erlikhan, I checked with my firend and he provided the following information: the guard is part of the blade and they have been wrought together, which is absolutely extraordinary for a steel weapon from that period. As Conogre pointed out, the only thing that is somewhat similar are certain bronze weapons more than two thousand years ago. The fullers converge, but 3-4 cm before the blade tip disappear. It does not look like it has been shortened.

Radu, thanks for your interest in the thread. I too myself often wondered of the reasons behind the almost complete lack of information on weapons from the Ottoman times in Bulgaria, while weapons from other parts of the Empire, such as the Arabian Peninsula have been well studied and do not fall under the general Ottoman description. I beleieve the main reason is quite stupid and political: 15 years ago a pro-Russian, anti-NATO totalitarian government in Bulgaria seeked to deny everything in our history that had to do with the 5 not so glorious centuries that we spent under the Ottomans. Weapons were no exception and they were associated with the Turkish, who then were "The Enemy". Now that we are no longer following certain pan-slavic myths and reevaluating our history, yataghans and other weapons are no longer frowned upon. Also, 15 years ago the collecting of any type of weapons was of course prohibited, but currently edged weapons are allowed for people to own with no restrictions. This certainly contributes to the increase of interest in all weapon types and they will gradually become better studied.
To conclude, I would not blame the western scholars for lumping Bulgarian weapons with the rest of the Turkish arms, as they had no access to Bulgarian museums and written research in Bulgaria on these weapons was almost absent. It is Bulgarian communist historians and archeologists that are to blame.